Thursday, October 17, 2013

This week were in the final stages of creating and finalizing our game. In our last class we found a few problems and mistakes and rules that didn't necessarily work. Also we found a few cards that were very off balanced and could be described as the "god card". So we had our work cut out for us. We got together as a group and finalized all the rules, we really did not have any problems agreeing on the rules, at this point we were so used to changing rules and trying to make it better. We had to finalize the card and that was our biggest problem. It became a lot more expensive then we originally thought. Also the back of the card design that we originally created did not center itself correctly. So we had to scrap that idea entirely and think of a new plan to go with as far the back of the card design.

After spending multiple hours in staples trying to figure how to work our the card printing situation, we finally got them printed without a back. Taking the idea from "pokemon" with a uniform back design scheme, we printed out something that looked like an obstacle illusion to put on the back of the cards. We created a box, using a shoe box and made a rule book pamphlet that explains everything perfectly.

Thursday, October 10, 2013

During this week we were touching up the game and making some final tweeks in order to make the game flow better. While we were play testing we realized that the skill cards were too powerful and having 3 point cards was making it extremely easy to beat obstacles and no one was failing obstacles. If no one failed obstacles it would make it so none of the players would want to challenge the other players to their obstacle course. We then tried making only 1 and 2 point skill cards and that made the game go way too slow and no one was ever able to beat any of the obstacle courses. Our problem was finding the happy medium we needed to create an enjoyable game that had equal skill and obstacle cards. We also looked up designs for making a back to the cards because we did not previously have one. We talked through many different ideas, but finally agreed on an eyeball. The group also began working on the rule book and making sure everything was clear and would be understood by all the players reading it. Later in the week two of the group members met up in order to work out some glitches. They went through and changed some of the cards that proved to be too powerful while playing the game. They also worked on the grammar on the cards to make sure it was clear what the players got from picking that card. The other two members of the group got together to fix up the graphics on the cards. These two members also began coloring the graphics and cleaning them up. They also discussed what would be the best way to print the cards.

Later the group also got more play testers to give us their feedback and see if the many little changes we made over the week helped the flow of the game. From the feedback of the play testers, as a group we decided to make a few more changes. First we added four more obstacles and then we began thinking of ways to make the skill cards look better. Going into the last week of the game our group still has a lot of work to be done, but with a lot of time and hard work I think our group is on the path to a great game.

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

In the last class the group had a dispute about the mechanics of the cards whether to make the obstacle cards multipurpose by putting stat points on them and completely dropping skill cards, or stick with the original idea and have both obstacle and skill cards separate. In the end we decided to keep the skill cards because of the possibility of the players to be overwhelmed with to much to follow on a card. With the dispute resolved we managed to progress through the mechanics a bit more by deciding to split the cards into three different decks one for skill, another for Obstacles, and a third one with higher costing obstacles and better skill cards that players could draw from later in the game.

Although we were suppose to meet later during the week, we ended up cancelling due to two out of four members ended up with some last minute events came up. But the obstruction didn't stop there, the files that had the card designs and layout were corrupted and couldn't be recovered. But luckily most of the images were already cropped saved so remaking the card templates was much easier.

Later in the week although we all couldn't meet together, we were able to find a group of play testers to play our game. From observing the play test, we found out that players tend to lean towards the skill deck when drawing preparing for a challenge rather than focusing on their own obstacles. Also the players found that the advance deck wasn't as necessary as we originally thought as it just made players draw from that pile when they hit the requirement ignoring the original obstacle pile entirely. On the second play test we got rid of the advance deck and merged it with the decks. The game flow gradually grew faster but even then the the players still leaned towards drawing skill cards. Although the game flow grew faster compared to the first game the flow of the game was slowing down in late game. Because of the gradual speed decline the most points people were able to score was 2-3 points. So with this play test we learned we have to speed up our game flow, rework some of the card effects to balance the game, and try to divert the attention away from skill cards.